Publications

<p>One of the greatest challenges presented by the writings of Flann OtextquoterightBrien is how to place them.&nbsp;For some he is the peer of Joyce and Beckett; for others his work is modernist pastiche; still others regard him as a reactionary satirist; while for another group he is the forerunner of American postmodernism. His work is often loosely labelled textquotedblleftsurrealtextquotedblright or textquotedblleftabsurd.textquotedblright Yet OtextquoterightBrientextquoterights work is rarely read as avant-garde&nbsp;per se. This essay attempts to gain a new understanding of his oeuvre by reading a particular sliver of it – his manifestos – in the context of the historical avant-garde in Europe. Like many writers of his generation and the one previous, OtextquoterightBrien wrote manifestos. One example is the founding editorial of the textquotedblleftanti-magazinetextquotedblright&nbsp;Blather&nbsp;(1934), whose textquotedblleftsardonic laughtextquotedblright echoes the manifestos – or textquotedblleftanti-manifestostextquotedblright – of Vorticism and Dada. The manifesto of intertextuality in&nbsp;At Swim-Two-Birds&nbsp;(1939), meanwhile, is more complex: while it appears to be in some ways a sincere statement about the novel as a whole, it is also intensely ironic and self-mocking. But that only deepens its relation to the manifestos of the preceding decades, which frequently undercut their own purpose in the midst of their performance.</p>